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Abstract
In combination with crop growth models, farm-level models allow an in-depth,
process-based analysis of farmer adaptation to climate change and agricultural
policy. Evaluated for all farms in an area and extended by interactions, farm-level
models become agent-based models that allow simulating aggregate regional
production and structural change. Confined to a local or regional scope, however,
they cannot directly incorporate price feedbacks that play out at global scale. In this
contribution, we use experimental designs to evaluate a non-connected agent-based
model for the full space of potential future price developments. We discuss and
compare the use of standard regression analysis and non-parametric, automatic
methods (MARS and Kriging) to summarize supply behavior over the simulated price
ranges. Estimated supply functions constitute a surrogate model for the original
agent-based model and could be used to iterate detailed regional analysis with
national or global market models in an efficient way.